Mini Mini Teardown

[psi]

That worked perfectly, thanks. I used the freeware program "Partition Wizard Home" afterwards to expand the fat32 partition. I probably could have used it to do the copy but that seemed to require two sd card readers. The mini is powered up now and says that there is 29884 mb of storage total.

[loco_diabolo]

Managed to open my glo with the blade of a small kitchenknife, walking around the back.
I made it with no injuries of me or the glo!
Replaced the original it with a 16GB card.
Will there be a remarkable loss of battery life?

[psi]

I ended up switching back to my original 2 GB card, because new epub books that I added to the 32 GB card were not showing up in the list when I turned the reader on. After switching back to the original card and copying over the same books, they worked fine. I'm not sure if I did something wrong when setting up the new card or what.

[sysKin]

Just wanted to report that my attempt to swap internal memory was successful.

It was on a GLO, with a 8 GB card (Sandisk Ultra). I used the same tools that are mentioned on this thread (thanks!). I just finished copying ~2 GB of manga on it and all was recognised just fine.

I can't say I see any obvious speed improvement when using the device, but I've only had it for a day so it's hard to compare. It's certainly not slower. When using CrystalDiskMark on the USB-attached Glo (which is hardly the correct test) I get almost double the write speed and no change in read speeds.

If you can think of any relevant speed test I can make, I'm open to suggestions.

I'll reformat the original SD card so that I can benchmark it. This way, you'll at least be able to check if the card you're trying isn't slower.

[hardran3]

Just got my mini today, and already upgraded to a 16GB card, works great. Used dd to copy and gparted to extend the partition, on debian OS. Worked great, now I have ~14 GB free. I hope it will be enough space

[limin_boi]

I got my mini today as well, going to crack it open tonight and do some modifications. I see where the CyberTAN WC121 network controller is from the pictures, can anyone point out where the wifi antenna is located?

[sysKin]

Originally Posted by limin_boi

I see where the CyberTAN WC121 network controller is from the pictures, can anyone point out where the wifi antenna is located?

Looking at the pictures, it seems to be just on the other side of the board, behind the chip itself. There is "ANT1" printed inside.

[limin_boi]

Originally Posted by sysKin

Looking at the pictures, it seems to be just on the other side of the board, behind the chip itself. There is "ANT1" printed inside.

Thanks for the quick reply

[Liriel]

anyone know what a type is the SD Card? class?

i have the 8gb sd card from my Motorola Milestone in the Kobo Glo but its slower as with the original.
i have test the readingsped but the are almost equal.

8gb (class 2 or 4 )
average reading speed 18mb/s
access time 1.04ms

2gb (class ? kobo glo original)
average readingspeed 17,5mb/s
access time 1.43ms

[sysKin]

Originally Posted by Liriel

anyone know what a type is the SD Card? class

Be careful with the class, it only measures the maximum sustained write speeds.

Other things being equal, higher class is achieved by sacrificing random access times, and therefore higher class can be worse in any usage other than camera taking photos.

About the only way to measure its actual speed in variety of scenarios is to run your own test for all those scenarios...

Your measurements look good though, how did you make them? Perhaps it's write speeds that are slower with the new card...

For what it's worth, on my Glo with a new Sandisk SD:

[root@(none) /]# hdparm -t /dev/mmcblk0
/dev/mmcblk0:
Timing buffered disk reads: 51 MB in 3.02 seconds = 17248 kB/s

[Liriel]

mmh I could not make the write test because i had to formate the card.
I would buy this card "Sandisk Mobile Ultra Class 10 UHS-1 microSDHC 8GB " it cost only 8 euro in germany.

I notice it especially when opening a book, standby or shut down that he takes a lot longer than this with the orginal card

[ewphoenix123]

After doing a lot of research I stumbled over this thread, listing benchmarks for a lot of microsdhc cards.

xda microsdhc testthread

The card currently in my Kobo is actually pretty good already, with it's 0,3 mb/s random write speed.
Many cards offer substantially worse results in that area, because they are developed for fast sequential r/w speeds, not random access, so chances are high you get a worse card performance wise, if you just pick a new one randomly based on a higher class.

The "Sandisk Mobile Ultra Class 10 UHS-1 microSDHC" line is apparently one of the better variants, with theoretical 4-5 times the access speed.
I ordered myself a 16gb variant (for 11€) and let you guys know if I notice any difference in reality after it arrived.

[ewphoenix123]

So, I finished installing the new sd and ran a few tests.

# Page turn speed is pretty much the same, depending of which times I compare.
It may be slightly slower, maybe ~5% at max, but that can as well be a standard deviation, we are talking 50 page turns in ~33 instead of ~32 seconds.

So no benefit here.

# Browsing collections, books seems slightly faster, but it was never slow in the first place.

# Opening books for the first time feels a little bit faster.

# Extra space of 15gb seems to work, no problems with books not showing up as other user reported with some sd cards.

# Transfer speed computer (calibre) to Kobo increased ~3x fold, that includes sending/deleting books and updating metadata

# Updating of the database on the Kobo after adding new books is 2-3x faster

# The fetching of book covers on the Kobo after the transfer is almost instantaneous now.

I don't think upgrading really benefits the casual user, Kobo put a pretty decent SD in my GLO model and the reading experience by itself won't improve with a new card.
Everyone who wants to maintain a big library on the reader, on the other hand, will experience a noticeable speed increase when adding or replacing books, and of course a much bigger storage size.

[slate]

I just opened up a mini today and what did I find? A stock 4GB Sandisk with 1.9GB of unallocated space. You may have some hidden treasures in yours too.

Gotta love factory shortages.

[Tiroler]

Does anyone have an sd card image for the Kobo Mini? I've frozen mine through an attempted update with no other method to get the thing working. I've seen other image floating around but none for the mini.

Thanks